Warren and Casey finished a jury trial in October of 2021 in which their clients’ home was being condemned for a new highway.  Their clients had assembled over 250 acres of land in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and they had improved it with a home that was over 7,000 SF in size.  The home was located inside a 5/8 mile race-horse practice track.  A new State highway project took about 22 acres of land, the home, the racetrack, and a pond, and it left their property divided by the new highway.  The State Department of Transportation put on evidence that it owed around $1.3 million.   The jury returned a verdict for over $2.9 million, and after adding prejudgment interest, the final judgment amount was $3,694,118.  This final judgment amount was nearly three times more than the State’s position of what it owed, and it was the just compensation that the homeowners were entitled to.

In September of 2021, firm members Bill Watts and Ryan Luna, representing a local hospital, successfully obtained an order from the Alabama Supreme Court, granting the hospital’s petition for writ of mandamus, and reversing the trial court’s order denying the hospital’s motion to dismiss the action on the grounds that the action was barred by the statute of limitations.

Helmsing Leach partners Win Stuardi and Kirk Mattei recently secured a defense award for their nursing home client in a wrongful death case following a 4-day arbitration hearing.  Plaintiff alleged that the nursing staff breached the standard of care in failing to monitor a resident who allegedly choked while eating dinner.  Through the testimony of the nursing staff and expert witnesses (a registered nurse and pulmonologist), the nursing home put on evidence that the standard of care was met, the resident had finished eating and the probable cause of the resident’s death was a pulmonary embolus.  After hearing all the evidence, the arbitrator ruled in favor of the nursing home.